Part Three

Yet our Hope~

Chapter Twenty

Of Compost and Shareholders

2030

Morrow's Watch had come far. And not just in the figurative we're trending up in numbers overall and have our own bakery way. It had grown. Reached far. Literally. Every year it had crept further out from its walls and fences, until every forest and field far as you could see had found itself a busy pack of custodians.

They'd cleared the forests of dead growth and not-so-dead Infected, and repurposed the fields rolling down the gentle mountain's slopes to grow anything from wheat to sugar beets. And because they had (air quotes up) standards (air quotes down), they'd gone as far as to tend the paths and roads leading in and out of their expanding territory, too.

Shit, they'd been attacking potholes way more aggressively than the city council had done with that stupid-ass hole that'd festered in front of Kyle's driveway for the better part of his house ownership.

. . .

He missed that hole.

By proxy, anyway.

You'll miss Morrow's Watch, was the logical thought to follow, tempting him to turn around. To look. But looking back was how you got reminded of all those other potholes in your past; the ones far deeper and potentially fatal. The Theodores. The Schrödinger's Sebastians and Tituses and Breckens and— you know what? That list was fucking endless.

So.

No looking back.

And no succumbing to the void opening in his chest, either; the capital G Grief reserved for a parent outliving their child. The Unthinkable, now very much thought.

Kyle's hands clenched, giving the Millennium Emu's steering bars a merciless squeeze.

Step back. Think forward.

He'd killed the bike's engine at the southern-most edge of Morrow's territory, parking at one of those scenic roadside stops meant to give you a good view out over the hilly valley. Which it did. Spectacularly. It served him up everything that lay ahead: untended woods, wild fields, and the derelict remnants of a rural life.

His future, huh?

Kyle's eyes cut to the side.

There was Fi. Tiny Fi, who vanished into the wide saddle of the overloaded U.S.S Slow'n'Serious and yet held up the bike like it was nothing.

She had a way with things bigger than her.

Horses. Hulks. Hapocalypses. Hranes.

You doing okay there, buddy? Kyle asked his defective sense of humor and allowed himself a quiet grimace.

Back to Fi.

Now there was his future; his now, his yesterday. His for-fucking-ever, come hell and high water.

Yeah.

A trio of road signs rose behind Fi, where they'd face anyone coming up the road and tell them in no uncertain words what to expect. Similar signs were posted all over the Morrow's Watch borders, where they'd been squeezed into choke points, leaned next to brooks and over deer trails, and served as much as a warning as they did as a means of expression for Morrow's artists who liked to go all out when given the chance.

This particular set was made from rows of bolted together plates, their messages written across them in bold letters. We're watching you from here on out, one said, with binoculars painted next to the words as they repeated themselves in different languages.

Friends, you're welcome, said another. A weather-worn metal scorpion—nailed to a wooden compass carved in mimicry of arrow tips—dangled from it, suspended by a frayed string.

Everyone else is compost, warned the last one. Someone'd painted a small mound of earth beneath the words. A green baby plant sprouted from the dirt.

"Good Morning, Morrow's Watch," Rahim said from the radio clipped to the bike's right handle. "Today's the day."

Kyle's lips twitched down. His eyes hadn't once left Fi. She sat motionless, her attention fixed forward and her expression drawn by the same grief that had Kyle's chest so empty.

The same grief that wouldn't let him feel much as he faced an open road.

No sense of adventure. No excitement. Not even good old anxiety. Yeah, sure, he'd miss Morrow's. He'd miss the family he'd put together there (shared blood optional), and god, he'd miss the dogs.

But Fi'd been right.

Holding still here, surrounded by three years worth of memories of his child? It would have killed them. Maybe not literally, but you didn't need to be compost to essentially qualify for dead.

"Today's when," Rahim continued, "we see off the two souls who're the best of us. Our tireless guardians who've kept the night at bay ever since the Fall gave it teeth."

Fi puffed up a small scoff. "That's a wee thick," she said, and Kyle's otherwise hollow chest filled with a familiar scratch at the underbelly of his aching heart.

Unaware—and if he'd been, undeterred—by Fi's criticism, Rahim kept going. "We expect you back. Doesn't matter how long it takes until you've found your peace, Morrow's Watch wll wait for you. We'll wait for you. We love you. Never forget that."

There was a short pause. A click.

"Good luck."

Fi's mouth twisted.

His heart did, too. And fuck him sideways, did the starting cords of More Than a Feeling press the issue or what, driving a tickle of tears to Kyle's eyes. He blinked them away and coaxed the Emu's engine on, a motion Fi mirrored, perfectly in sync without once looking at him.

The song followed them down the road. It even managed to make it to the finish and make room for another two tunes before the radio's reach finally failed and the thin connection they'd still had to Morrow's Watch tapered off into static.

From that point onward, it'd be only them. Him. Her. The rumble of the engines. And that itch under his heart, promising him they'd be alright.

2036

Kyle pulled the manufacturing hall's entrance gate open. He'd had to cut through a chain holding the thing shut from the inside, giving him no small sense of 'Oh maybe I am clever,' over having picked the fire escape for their entrance last night.

A night they'd survived so they could step out into a gray morning.

And so he could feel like pan-fried shit following a thorough ass kicking, an Inhibitor injection, and a few long hours spent popping in and out of hazy consciousness while Death and Windfall fought over who'd get to keep him.

Windfall had won.

Duh.

A grey morning with a light drizzle waited for him outside, and for a second after he'd stepped outside, Kyle ignored the world at large. It could wait. (Not really. But give him a sec, okay?) He turned his face up to the sky, felt the faint touch of tiny droplets on his skin, and sighed a quiet, world-weary sigh.

Pain crawled all over him. His leg ached (a throb here, a stab there). And on top of that he was burning up, leaving him to ponder if the rain ghosting by his skin was going up in steam.

None of it was a big surprise. Healing while running on nothing but fumes would do that to you, especially when you added Windfall battling it out with about a dozen infections at the same time.

So, yeah. He'd enjoy the cooling water for a moment, even if he knew he'd end up spending the rest of his day with wet, sticky clothes.

"Jesus, you look like shit," said Lawan from the far-off reaches of the real world, pulling Kyle back into the thick of it. He cracked his eyes open and threw her a sideways look without turning his head back down.

Did she have a point?

Yes.

Kyle was a mess from the ankles upwards; bloodied, bruised, his clothes torn. And not to forget the leftovers of the bandaging job Aiden had managed after Kyle had passed out. It'd staunched the bleeding long enough for Windfall to get its shit together and begin knitting his meat into working order. He'd have bled out otherwise. What a waste that would've been…

Lawan hadn't only brought judgement of Kyle's lack of put-togetherness after a harrowing night, though. Nope, she brought everyone down with her. Her pals. Anderson. Anderson's pals. Alberto, Vincenzo.

Everyone but Hakon.

Hm.

An annoying pinch of misguided concern for double-crossing Frenchies crossed Kyle's mind. He tried to step on it.

"Did you get the Hunter?" Anderson asked, prompting Kyle to finally move his head with a wordless nod. Then he swung his arm out and back, pointing into the gloomy hall stuffed full of equipment and into the general direction of where he'd left the body.

Aiden still hovered over it. He occasionally touched it with his shoes, sometimes nudging its legs, then its arms, or wiggling its slack-jawed head. Whenever he did the latter, Kyle heard the light clink of the chain still wrapped around the fucker's neck.

Strangling it was the last thing Kyle remembered clearly before Aiden had jabbed him.

Anderson let out a quiet whistle. "Damn," she said, right before three of the men peeled from the group and piled through the gap in the gate so they, too, could say they'd poked the dead body of a Night Hunter.

Or so Kyle thought their thought process went.

It's what he'd do, anyway, had he been one of them. And if he didn't have more important shit to do. Alright, downtime is over. Get your head back in the game.

"You're one short," he said first, granting Hakon the dignity of being acknowledged for what he'd done for them last night.

Lawan clicked her tongue. It gave Kyle the impression she was— well— disappointed. "We left Hakon on the overpass. He got torn up pretty bad last night. Bad enough he couldn't climb the rope himself and we had to haul him up. But he's alive."

An emotion hopped by Kyle's general sense of exhaustion. Relief?

Damn, maybe Fi's right. You do attach too quick. About as quick as those stupid, clingy Velcro plant balls that liked to stick to a pant leg.

"He gonna pull through?"

"Yes," she said with a roll of her eyes.

See? Disappointed.

Okay. With that out the way, Kyle refocused on the entire point of today: gathering the backup he needed to kick down Waltz's door. Which meant… He shot a look into the direction of Villedor's center, squinting at all the rock in the way.

"Anderson?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"Can you raise your PK command from here?"

Her scoff answered the question before she put words to it. "No. If you want to radio Aitor you'll need to get back to the center."

"Right. Guess that's where I'm going then," he muttered. "Hate losing another day though."

"Can't be helped," she said. Unhelpfully.

Lawan, in the meantime, piped up with a cheerful, "You made it," which she directed at the crunch of footsteps drawing up by Kyle's side. "When we heard that Volatile on the radio last night we thought that's it for you."

Aiden met the comment with a weak smile. Come to think of it, the kid did a lot weakly since Kyle had woken up to a raging headache and his body throwing an all-inclusive fit. Looking. Breathing. Staring. Existing.

The Antizin, he figured.

"You're surprised I'm alive?" Aiden's smile curled into something wryly. "When he's the one who went up against the Hunter?"

. . .

Ego.

Stroked.

Like a needy dog.

Kyle cleared his throat.

"Eh." Lawan's mouth quirked in a smile so full of tease aimed at Aiden, Kyle was once again amazed by how it flew right over the kid's head. "He's a big boy," she said as she snatched Aiden's shoulder to give it a row of encouraging squeezes.

Aiden bore the affection with weak dignity.

"Ready to head back, kid?" Kyle asked in the name of a) hurrying this along and b) saving the kid from whatever small talk might have followed.

It didn't exactly have the effect Kyle would have thought. Rather than be glad for the rescue, Aiden turned a skeptical grimace on Kyle's bandaged leg. Right before he regarded Kyle with a much more meaningful look.

See— hours might have rolled by with them stuck in the command room. Awake. Hurting, but awake. And yet they hadn't talked yet.

About last night.

About Kyle nearly killing him.

Stuffed into a small room lit by no more than a flashlight and a fading UV flare—while a dead Volatile stank up the air—just hadn't been very conductive to conversation. Especially for Kyle, who'd turned Aiden's attempt at "Can we talk?" away with a grumpy, "Later."

Twice.

But Kyle had meant it. Honest. He'd get around to it, he just needed to be in the right headspace to be able to give Aiden what he needed: reassurance. Because while Kyle might have looked at what'd happened as nothing more (and nothing less) than a regular risk of living in his own skin, for Aiden it'd been more. It'd been terrifying. Surreal. A bit prophetic, maybe, heralding his own future.

Yeah.

Later.

Right headspace.

First he needed to raise Aitor on the radio, get his ass back to the Fish Eye, and take one last crucial step closer to Fi.

A step which, as it turned out, was going to be preambled by many, many small and painful ones. Or so Kyle's leg told him as he ignored Aiden's worried look and limped on ahead.

Ever since the crack of dawn, Aiden had swung back and forth between two extremes. One second he was an anxious wreck barely able to hold a straight thought; then one of those very same bent out of shape thoughts turned him hysterically giddy over how he'd lived, his personhood remaining intact.

It was an exhausting up and down which chased him all the way back to the Fish Eye. No amount of rain, change of scenery (or clothes) helped, meaning by the time he dropped his sore bones into a chair to grasp for a bit of rest, his fingers immediately began trembling against his thigh, scratching with the same restless energy as whatever the fuck was going on in his head.

Crane hadn't wasted any time after they'd returned. First, he'd sniped at Aitor on the radio. Then he'd cleaned up—exploiting a steady downpour of freely available water—and eventually he'd gravitated up the side of the Fish Eye, where he'd reclaimed the small table and chair arrangement that allowed him to stare at two of the Church's holds without anything getting in the way.

Healthy?

No.

But who was Aiden to judge someone's coping mechanisms? Or the lack thereof. Plus, the longer he was up here with Crane, the more frequently he asked himself: Are they both there? whenever his eyes snagged on the far-off castle wrapped in grey clouds and blurred by the rain.

He sighed.

Mia. Zofia.

Were they both behind those thick walls?

And what good was it doing him sitting here, staring? There were countless better things for him to do, chief among those getting rest.

Theoretically, Aiden could have split from Crane at any time once Lawan had guided them safely back to the Fish Eye. Like— he could have crawled into his cot. Slept. That kind of thing. But there weren't any answers waiting for him under the thin, thready covers. No, those answers were with Crane and he was damned to let the man off the hook.

So. Here he was. Squirming on the same rickety chair as the last time he'd been up here.

Someone had put up a parasol when the rain had started. It was a faded red and leaned at a bit of an angle, allowing the water to fall from one side in an almost solid curtain now that it'd begun to pour down in earnest. A constant prattle of drops hitting the fabric droned on above them, a noise which grew louder by the minute and only served to make Aiden more anxious.

He shifted uneasily in his chair, grabbed the water bottle Crane had brought along, and twisted the cap off to take a few long gulps.

"How do you think they're doing?" he finally asked and worked up the courage to look at Crane. It hadn't been what he'd wanted to say, but maybe a little bit of warmup would do them both some good.

Crane didn't immediately turn his head. He didn't even twitch, just stayed right as he was: leaning back on one chair while his leg stuck out from beneath the parasol's cover as it rested on a crate. A scratched up plastic tarp kept it dry.

When he did eventually roll his head into Aiden's direction, the look Aiden got came with a pointedly quirked brow.

"Alberto and the others," Aiden clarified, "back at the solar plant. You think they'll be able to get it running again?"

Crane's right shoulder twitched with a shrug. "They better. Now say what you actually want to."

Why do I have to start?

Aiden glared. Briefly. "Last night— before last night you said you had all of this under control. You don't, do you?"

"I do." A pause. "We do."

Zofia and him, Aiden guessed, and squinted at Crane. "You attacked me. How's that control?"

Crane's mouth set into a thin line. Then he pulled his leg off the chair with a grunt and repositioned himself to better face Aiden. Aiden found himself doing the same until they'd both settled at the table, where Crane's stare grew heavier and heavier.

Rain kept falling, a steady backdrop to the uncomfortable pressure rising in Aiden's chest. He wasn't about to like what he'd be hearing, was he?

But whenever had he? Lately?

"I wasn't lying. When I told you you'd be alright as long as you're able to think through the—" Crane paused. His eyes unfocused. "Anger. Fury. That full-body urge to lash out at just about everything. But that's not what happened last night, or what you went through when I found you crawling out of that hole in the roof. You'd been down there in the dark, unconscious, for at least an hour, while whatever the Volatile bite triggered was still fresh in your system.

You had no chance of fighting it. Just like I didn't when the GRE first caught us."

Aiden realised he'd begun to fidget with the water bottle. Embarrassed, he set it down between them.

Crane continued. "All Fraser had to do back then was take me out of the light for a minute and I was—" He snapped a finger, the noise surprisingly crisp and loud over the prattle of the rain. "—gone. Kinda, anyway. Sometimes it took a while before it wiped me out completely, but the end result was always the same. I'd wake up hurting and remembering jack-shit."

"A minute?"

Crane clicked his tongue. "Not a literal minute. Look. Words are difficult. Just stick with me, okay?"

"Right, but if this is your way of reassuring me then it is not working," Aiden said, feeling, simply put, sick to his stomach.

"I'm getting to that part." Crane's eyes slid over to the castle. His lips twitched into a scowl. His voice levelled out into a flat tone. "He did the same with Fi, but she was… unpredictable. I figure Fraser ended up giving up on her and only kept her around because he knew I'd behave as long as he went easy on her."

"I can't imagine…" Aiden said, his heart squeezing.

Crane's mouth twisted into a sad smile. "You know, I kinda think you can. Anyway. Fraser and his Genify buddies had two problems to solve." He stuck a finger out. "The first one being time, and so they spent the first months of our capture—" The finger twitched, adding a half-hearted air quote. "—fixing Windfall. Or us, really. He needed for Windfall to rewrite not just the virus, but to continue work on the host's—our—DNA, too. Make us compatible to a point where the virus would stop replicating and spreading, which is always the bit that gets you. No, what he promised his GRE shareholders was how he'd eventually lock his two promising test dummies—that's Fi and me—into a freaky symbiosis with the thing, after which we'd never again have to worry about the virus eventually overwhelming us."

Something tickled at Aiden's memory; a ghost of a voice repeating what Crane had said. And what Zofia had told Aiden back at the medical centre. Like someone'd told him all of this before. Before before.

When he'd been a brother.

"I won't lie and say he didn't make progress with it. Shit, if he'd had more time with us maybe he'd have actually pulled it off."

Crane paused and gave his wounded leg a careful rub.

"Still with me?"

Aiden nodded. "I guess. Fraser made sure you'd not turn after only a few hours in the dark. Which is how you managed to survive through the Fall and on the road as Pilgrims."

"Yep. So here we are, still at risk, but no longer under the immediate threat of turning overnight, and Fraser can throw in problem number two into the mix." Crane's eyes latched onto Aiden's and a second finger came up. "Our triggers," he said, adding gravity to the words by fixing Aiden in a meaningful stare.

"You mentioned those," Aiden said. "Pain? Stress?"

"Fear," Crane continued, "anger, anxiety, hunger, medical shock. Injuries. A lot of those set off not only the virus, but Windfall, too. And that's by design. It's how they keep the host's body alive in times of distress." He pointed at his leg. "And how I know this'll be good by tomorrow."

"Will it," Aiden said, his tone even and not bothering with the question mark.

"Fuck yeah it'll be. I'll be tap dancing up those castle stairs." A pause. A sigh. And then, "Now, this? My triggers? This I got. And I can teach you how to manage them, since that's what keeps you you, even while all you may want to do is fly off the handle and eat someone's face off. But what happened last night and what you went through after you got thrown off the roof… that's different."

Crane's mouth pulled into a small, rueful smile. "I… ah… I miscalculated. And I'm usually pretty damn good at math. But— anyway— I went out of my way to heal my arm, which, you know, by itself isn't that big of a deal. But rather than taking it easy afterwards which would've given Windfall a chance to sort me out, I kept on pushing. Yo, Crane, you'll need the advantage when you go up against a Hunter, I told myself and at the end that's what backfired on me."

Turning his head to look at the stairs coming up behind them, Crane's voice gained a distracted quality.

"Or backfired on you, really. Would I have come to my senses and stopped the second I got my hands on you?" He tsk'd through his teeth. "Maybe. Would I have recovered the next day? Potentially. Do any of the maybes and woulds matter? No, they don't. I fucked up. I— Hey, Lawan."

Aiden leaned his head back to watch Lawan hurry up the rest of the stairs. His heart sank. A bit, anyway. There went the talk he'd been waiting for all day, interrupted by a friendly smile under a mop of drenched black hair.

"I come bearing gifts," she told them as she ducked beneath the parasol.

The gift was a trio of chubby glasses on a small tray, their tops covered by coasters. Alcohol, as Aiden's nose informed him as soon as Lawan tipped the first coaster aside and offered him the glass. Not Crane. Him. The one guy at the table who'd shake his head and make a pointed grab for the water bottle instead.

"Never thought I'd meet a Pilgrim who doesn't like getting shitfaced." Exchanging a quick glance with Crane, Lawan flicked the remaining coasters from their glasses, then topped them off to the very brim with the one Aiden had turned down. "Frank's made some progress while you two were up here brooding."

"Not brooding," said Crane and leaned forward to snatch up one of the glasses, somehow managing not to spill a single drop. "Plotting." He set the glass down. "What's the news?"

"With the GRE tunnel open, the Carriers can run messages to and from the plant. They've agreed to establish a route for us come daybreak, meaning if anything changes there we'll be the first to know." She paused, then squeezed by Aiden's back and propped herself up on the railing. The parasol just about covered her there still. "He's also got Jack Matt committed to come by tomorrow."

At the mention of the Peacekeeper Commander—the man who stood between Crane walking into the Church by himself or finding soldiers backing him—Crane sat straighter.

"But Matt won't do shit until he sees proof. He needs to know it worked."

"It worked," Crane said and pushed himself to his feet. It was right about then that Aiden realised Crane hadn't reacted to Matt's name; even as Aiden's eyes itched, unaccustomed to a sudden change in illumination.

It'd been growing dark. Not quite night yet, but getting there, hurried on by the rain and thick clouds. Which meant darkness — a darkness which all of a sudden had itself challenged.

The lights had come on.

All around, stretching beyond the Fish Eye and reaching well beyond Villedor's wall, strings of light lit the rain-drenched evening. They appeared in blurs of colour; up along buildings, down in the streets, and some distant and so far up in the sky he thought they wanted to hide in the heavy clouds.

"Holy shit." Lawan's words came up in a gasp. "It worked," she echoed. "You did it! You two, Alberto, you're all fucking saints. Look!"

Aiden was, indeed, looking — at least until Lawan got in the way and threw her arms around him in a hug so tight, all the aches Aiden had been carrying around for the better part of the day ranted at him how they hadn't gone anywhere yet. And to top it off, he was pretty damn sure she'd just smacked a kiss to the side of his head.

How're we feeling about that? he asked himself.

Uncomfortable?

Flattered?

Swept up by the joy vibrating off her?

Undecided, he concluded, even as Lawan bounced off, rounded the table, and slammed into Crane's side, leaving Aiden to straighten out his shirt and gather up his thoughts.

They'd actually managed it.

Even if he'd seen the light come on last night for a second, he'd not actually believed it'd stick. But there they were; countless beads of smudged light blooming in the rain. A whole city.

Alive.

And then it died again.

The city plunged back into darkness without as much as a warning. Streets went dark. Buildings blacked out. The far off winks of light beyond the wall vanished. Worse, it was as if the lights had come on only to take the others with them as they left, snuffing out a large area he could have sworn had been lit only a few minutes ago.

Like the Church's castle up on that hill. It'd stood out earlier, illuminated by a shroud of washed out light. Now it was straight up gone.

"What— no," Lawan blurted. "You've got to be kidding me, what the fuck?"

"Relax." Crane thumped back into his chair. "The grid got overloaded or some electric doohickey gave out. See where the lights all went in that patch up there?"

Lawan huffed. "Yeah. That's mainly Church territory."

"Well, sucks to be them. They must've had their shit still hooked up to Villedor's main power grid. Which just fell over." Crane picked up his glass to take a careless swig. "But how's that for proof, huh? Now all you gotta do is find out what power station conked out, fix it, and you've got your electricity back. Just—" He finished his glass. "—maybe not tonight."

"You think so?"

Crane nodded. "I do," he said; two words which suddenly had themselves challenged by an ominous rumble rolling out across Villedor's mountains.

Thunder.

Stupid. Foreboding. Thunder.

Aiden's knees snapped together and he clenched his teeth. Where there was one distant rumble, there were often many more.

"I hope you're right," Lawan said. "It would suck if everyone's seen the lights come on and then that's it."

"It won't be."

The skies rumbled again. Aiden's throat constricted. His heart picked up the pace; and not in the same (temporarily) pleasant way when the lights had come on and he'd gotten a tiny dose of the elusive thing called Hope. No, this was your typical budding panic attack.

"Okay. I'll go tell Frank," Lawan said, then quickly added, "And hey— Aiden?"

Startled by the sound of his name, he raised his chin and found Lawan looking straight him. She was smiling.

"Hm?"

"I'm glad you didn't get eaten by that Volatile."

Aiden blinked. "Yeah, me too?"

And he was. Genuinely. But that didn't mean he had to like the distant flash of lightning hopping across the clouds. Or the thunder that followed. Or how Crane stared plainly at him even as Lawan had finally left.

"You always turn white as a sheet when a girl flirts with you?" Crane suddenly asked.

. . .

"What?" was all Aiden managed at first, before he caught on and spotted a faint smile on Crane's lips. "Ha. Ha."

"You good though?"

"Yeah. Yeah I'm fine," Aiden insisted.

Crack.

Rumble.

"Sure?"

Nod.

"Kay. You want to pick up where we left off?"

Aiden pursed his lips. Did he? He'd wanted to earlier. Hadn't he?

"Yeah. I— okay, maybe not," he stammered uselessly. Uncomfortable energy hopped through his chest, spoiling even the lights coming on. The last thing he wanted to do was add more fuel to it by facing his uncertain future. Or by remembering last night.

So he latched on to something that'd confused him earlier, back when Crane had talked about triggers and DNA and whatnot.

"But, ah— I have a question," Aiden managed while he turned the water bottle he'd apparently not let go of since the last time he'd picked it up.

"Hm?"

He leaned his head sideways as he looked to Crane. "What's a— what's a shareholder?"